Placement criteria for GHS English course could change

Lisa Chamoff

Updated 10:36 pm, Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Greenwich High School administrators are considering tougher requirements for admission into the ninth-grade advanced English class after parents complained that some top students aren't being challenged enough in their freshman year.

GHS Headmaster Christopher Winters will be presenting a proposal to the Board of Education Thursday night, after a year of discussion among English and social studies teachers about the course levels.

Currently, GHS freshmen can take either a grade-level English class or an advanced course, along with a social studies class, called World Themes, taken at the same level. Winters said staff looked at the make-up of the advanced class, and found that students were all high-performing -- 77 percent scored at the advanced level on the reading section of the Connecticut Mastery Test. The class was also fairly evenly split between students who had been in the district's Advanced Learning Program through elementary and middle school, and those who had not.

In November, 318 current freshmen, of the 359 in the advanced English class, were surveyed and asked whether they were being appropriately challenged in the class. Nearly 80 percent of the students said they agreed or strongly agreed that they were being appropriately challenged and felt that the class was moving at the right pace.

"Based on that information, we felt it was the right course of action to maintain the current structure we have," Winters said.

Currently, students are placed in the advanced class based on their grades and their guidance counselor's recommendation.

Winters said that they may start looking at adjusting the criteria for placement into the advanced course, aiming to have 40 to 45 percent of freshmen in the course, as opposed to 48 to 59 percent, which has been the range over the past seven years.

No specific recommendations for guidelines have been made yet.

"We're signaling it's something we might look at in terms of trying to get the balance we think is the best balance," Winters said.

"A real percentage of students are not being intellectually challenged in the English and social studies classes," Francis said. "We're looking for an appropriate curriculum that moves at a faster pace, has more complex material with higher-level critical thinking, and expect a higher-level product from students."

From second through eighth grade, students in ALP are pulled out of their regular classes for advanced language arts instruction. Francis said that is the kind of environment parents are looking for.

Winters argues that it's better for freshmen to be with a more mixed group of students, since they tend to segregate into groups of students with similar abilities as they move through the high school. There are options for Advanced Placement English and social studies courses by 10th grade.

"I think that there are benefits to having two of your courses where, in addition to being academically challenged, you're developing life skills to transition into high school and learning with a wide variety of students."